User talk:OpenHouseStudio

Help
I have some experience using MediaWiki when I worked at an open source hardware nonprofit. I am beginning to edit some Wikipedia pages, and I have a few pages I would like to start, as well. One thing I am very interested in is improving the quality of pages for topics about which I have some professional knowledge. I have read in some pages, like Content assessment, that content is graded, but I would like to understand more about how to see the grading of a particular article. For instance, the Living Building Challenge is a subject about which I am knowledgeable, and the article is flagged as needing much improvement. I'd like to understand it's current grade, to get a sense of how far it has to go to be a high quality article. I would like to look into the grading of the other articles I am interested in editing (see my user page), so that I can make sure to get to those with the lowest ratings first, before moving on to those that need more minor edits. Can you help me? (This is the first time I've ever used the "help me" function, so I'm excited to see how this works!) OpenHouseStudio (talk) 02:09, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid you're likely to have to change your username. Usernames that imply shared use, for instance, by being the name of a company, are not allowed.
 * So about grades. You've already looked at content assessment. In my experience, grades B and C are just the opinion of whoever assigned them. The standards for applying those grades are respected somewhat indifferently by editors. While it is fairly obvious what constitutes a "stub" or "start-class" article, giving a grade of B or C simply means that someone thinks they are somehow better than those low-class grades.
 * I seldom run into "A" grade articles. I'm sure there are lots of them out there, but often, when an article reaches that stage, there are usually one or more editors involved who work hard to improve it even more to the GA stage.
 * For grades that really mean something, you want to look at the process by which an article receives a "GA" or "FA" grade ("good article" and "featured article", respectively). For those grades, there is a pretty rigorous set of standards and processes. You can get a first step towards assessing an article by requesting a peer review.
 * While you are free to choose how to apply your efforts, you may find focusing on articles that are already in pretty good shape to be more satisfying than rescuing poor-quality articles. Each editor decides what they want to work on, though.
 * Oh, and one more thing. You mention your own professional knowledge and that makes me want to point you to: expert editors – maybe you are already aware of this advice, but a Wikipedia editor mentioning their own expertise is sort of triggering – it often portends a frustrating experience stemming from a misunderstanding about how Wikipedia works.  — jmcgnh (talk) (contribs) 08:20, 5 February 2021 (UTC)